Texture.

Film resolution to me is about texture just as much as it’s about image quality. The thing about movies is that everything seen and heard is created to serve the story. To evoke a complete sensory experience. And film resolution is as much a tool as aspect ratios or low-pass filters.

My personal preference is an imperfect image. It may come off as amateurish, but it’s naturalistic. Pristine pictures fall a bit too close to content creation territory for me, the “MKBHD 8K” type of resolution with a perfectly laid-out studio design and backdrop (I love MKBHD videos, by the way). Content has its place. Movies have their place. Both beautiful art forms in their own right. But what I’m talking about is what looks like “cinema” to me (as Scorsese would aptly call it).

I can shoot in 4K. It’s beautiful. But it has to be necessary for me. Because it’s also a bit uninteresting. “Why are we shooting in 4K?” I think is the question I should be asking myself as a director. Why do some painters choose oil, acrylic, watercolour, gouache, or tempera? Why do some artists lean towards realism while others lean towards impressionism, expressionism, cubism, or abstraction? I feel film resolution should be treated the same way. As a style. A mode of expression.

Yes, resource and budgetary constraints often play a role in determining the resolution used. But such is the case for every other tool in our artistic arsenal. It’s how we use those tools within the confines of our constraints that determines true creativity and artistry. Such is my belief. You share your own opinion, of course. But I firmly believe necessity is the mother of invention.

Take 28 Days Later (2002), an obvious example. I’ll leave it at that because I don’t know what to say, my thinking battery is dead. But you get what I mean. Just check out that film if you haven’t already. They used a camcorder with a 480p resolution due to time and budgetary constraints, but it also makes total sense given the themes and genre. And there are certain shots that just look like oil paintings, more or less proving my point.

Because in the end… resolution isn’t about perfection.

It’s about finding the image that serves the story best.

And maybe… just maybe… that’s the only resolution that matters.